On Tap Tonight: It’s Santana against the Orioles.

Johan Santana tonight against Baltimore. Like John Maine, his slider is the last pitch to come along. He got annoyed with me after his last start when I asked him about one of his pitches. What else was I supposed to ask him about?

I’m getting the impression Santana has some thin skin. Don’t think this is like Randy Johnson was with the Yankees, but it bears watching. If he learns anything from Pedro Martinez, dealing with the questions should be it.

We should know today about whether Jose Valentin will need an anti-inflammatory injection. Maybe Brian Schneider, or maybe not. Your guess is as good as mine.

John Delcos enters his third season covering the Mets for The Journal News after eight seasons on the Yankees beat. Prior to coming to New York, John covered the Baltimore Orioles, Cleveland Browns and Cleveland Indians.

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32 Comments

Simon

Could you be more specific about the question you asked? How did he display his annoyance with you? Do you have audio?

No offense, but I feel like this is kind of a cheap shot because it’s on your blog and you don’t have to back anything up. If you continue to feel that he has a thin skin problem, confront him on it or write an article about it so people will understand why you feel the way you do.

It seems that Gotay will be ready. Given he has no options, I would think he makes team.

That leaves it down to Clark or Pagan (assuming only 4 starters). It was interesting in that they had Pagan play last night against lefties, since his RH is not as good as his LH. He did not fair well.

In fact his splits are alot like Church’s. Good against RH, not against LH.

Something I’ve noticed this year that I’ve never noticed before, and it is because of the Johan Santana signing, is that players get asked the same questions over and over and over. And it must not be so bad in the smaller markets where there are 4 or 5 beat writers (less in many cases), but in New York where there are 5 million beat writers and bloggers and TV interviews, so players must get asked the same exact questions ad nausea. I don’t care how patient and kind a human being you are, that’s gotta get to you eventually. Especially if you are not used to it.

I know its no excuse – they are pros, and this is what its about. But I just never realized before Santana came how difficult it must be to be ‘that guy’ in NYC. And maybe I’ve never noticed it before because no one (in my lifetime) has ever signed to a NY team at this point in their career – an ace pitcher, the best in the game, coming into his prime? No, this is new ground for everyone. I don’t recall the kind of fervor surrounding Santana in the media ever being the same for another player.

He gets a pass from me… I’d be a little surly too if 45 people a day came up and asked me basically the same thing, especially during tune-up time when nothing really means anything.

Despite ‘Gentrys’ comment, Santana is only one of many who have been unable cope with New York City and the responsibilities of a major league player to represent his team to the public and the press. These players always have someone to blame except the real culprit – themselves.

Annie –
“I am sorry but not surprised to hear this about Santana. Santana is only one of many who have been unable cope with New York City.”

And your evidence to back up that statement would be?

It’s a completely irrational to make a statement like that when the guy hasn’t thrown a pitch off the mound at Shea yet. Perhaps we should give him a dozen or starts before we can make any intelligent and informed overview of how Santana handles NYC. You have been irrationally negative concerning Santana from the beginning and have an ax to grind for no reason.

John, need more context.
What exactly did you ask, how did you ask the question and at what point did you ask it?
Could it have been that he’d been answering similar questions from other reporters on this topic and he was tired of answering it?
And maybe it’s not you, dude. Seems like players get pretty irritable toward the end of Spring Training as they’re getting ready to play for real.
Not to pamper these guys and not to excuse them from the responsibilities their contracts mandate to make themselves available to media, I know, as a former newspaper reporter, I’d be peeved if there was a crowd of reporters waiting for me at the end of my work day before I could go home to my wife, asking me about a sentence I wrote, or a fact I reported, or a quote I got.
Keep up the great blog, dude!
I’m now behind enemy lines here in Georgia, but as you can tell, I’m still here in cyberspace and will be all season.

Annie it is so obvious that you want Santana to fail. You’ve made it clear how much you resent the money he makes and I’d have to guess that the resentment is coloring you interpretation of every bit of news about Santana. What you said didn’t really make sense in this context. The guy got annoyed by a question from a reporter in March and you’re already saying “I told you so”.

To Annie Savoy, who wrote: “Santana is only one of many who have been unable cope [sic] with New York City and the responsibilities of a major league player…” And you apparently believe that Santana is “unable cope” because of an unsupported and unelaborated claim in a single blog entry (I have never heard this type of thing mentioned anywhere else about Santana). Is it really that easy to convince you of something?? Could it be that, even if he was “annoyed,” maybe it was because he was just having a bad day? Maybe he just got upsetting family news? Maybe he was just tired? Maybe he was ill? Or maybe, just maybe, he doesn’t like Delcos and thought that he asked a stupid question? Naaahh, if he seemed annoyed with Delcos it must be because he is “unable cope” with New York. Sounds good to me. Let’s go with that one…

every other report I’ve heard on Santana is that he’s professional and courteous. Nothing to indicate he’ll be “unable to cope with NYC” as Annie claims..

John your report would have more credibility if I had seen anything along those lines ever reported before. If you’re talking about the Q&A posted by WFAN the other day after his start which someone (you?) asks if he still needs work on a particular pitch, to which he responded “you always ask me the same question” .. I think his response was light hearted and pretty smooth—maybe you’re the one with the thin skin?

What’s unsettling is that you seem to relish the opportunity to try and annoy Johan in the future.

What exactly are you talking about? The guy has been a Met for what, 2 months? What are you basing your statements on? In what way has he “been unable cope with New York City and the responsibilities of a major league player to represent his team to the public and the press.” Because JD didn’t like one of his answers? I mean seriously, could you exaggerate the situation any more? (Where exactly did he not take responsibility for his own actions again?) Or are you just jealous that he didn’t wind up on the Yankees?

where is the example that Santana is edgy with the media or thin skinned? Everything i’ve seen from him seems to be that he is relaxed with the media. I think it’s irresponsible for John to throw this out there without some sort of example. It may be his opinion, but it doesn’t make it truth. However, a lot of posters here don’t really care about truth and facts.

The host of the blog has asked all to respect others opinions. The only one to be dishonoring this request is Metsblog who disrespected Mike C’s opinion yesterday and now the host’s. as well as “a lot of posters”
Will you please Metsblog follow the request…Your opinion is no better or no worse than any others… So please don’t be the cause of returning this blog to the eruptions of last weekend.

So the guy “got annoyed” when you asked a question and instantly he has thin skin? John, you’ve never gotten annoyed when someone asked you a question? Please….........this story is non-existent. Santana is going to be great, this year and in future years. He can’t make it in NY? Revisit that statement at the end of the year. In the meantime….play ball!

Stop being a wuss. I hear the questions you guys ask, they sound the same day after day. Santana said in one of his interiews that he has no problem with the media as long as there is something to talk about. The copy of the same questions day after day does not count as something to talk about.

Annie, I hate to pile on, but I agree with the others. I can’t see any reason for the criticism of Santana. Not when he’s yet to play a single real game in NY yet. Not when his reputation in Minnesota was pretty impeccable. Sure, their media contingent is much smaller, but if he were a bad guy in any way, it probably would have come out by now. Players with negative reps usually gain them early in their careers.

Is it true that you were against the Santana trade because of the money he would make? Aren’t you the one who makes posts about Tiger Woods here? Do you resent his big money? And if you admire the Yankees (as it seems you do), what do you think about A-Rod who makes even more than Santana? I’d rather be paying Santana $23 million/year for 6 years than the $27.5 million/year the Yankees will be paying A-Rod for 10 years. Yikes!

I’m just wondering John, how would you feel if a group of reporters surrounded you after every article you wrote and asked you about every word choice, every punctuation, all the points you made. Now, thats not realistic, but think about Johan, he puts up with a lot, a lot of players do, and most of the time, hasn’t he been pretty good about it all? He’s seemed pretty open to answer a lot of questions to me. Sure, you’ll have moments when you’ve just had enough with answering the same types of questions over and over and over again. My advice is, give the guy a break, i know you have to ask the question, but does everyone have to be amiable every single day? Can’t you be in a bad mood? Having a bad day? How do you know what was going on in his life that day other then baseball? I just think you should give the guy a chance before painting this picture of him.

Delcos is just sensitive guys, he can’t take it when his nitpicking gets shunned by the best pitcher in the game. He’s also prone to taking one example and using it to make vast generalizations about a player. He probably just took Santana’s “annoyance” personally and felt heated and needed to write something like this on his blog about it. Delcos is known for doing things like this, making random negative comments. When someone like Adam Rubin or David Lennon says something like this, THEN you can actually believe it, not now.

Scott, I haven’t, but now I’ll have to keep it in mind. I’ve been searching for a good pizza spot around the City Hall area since school started.

Also, since we’re talking pizza, I need to mention Grimaldi’s under the Brooklyn Bridge. Their pizza is phenomenal, and the view of the city is great. One of the nicest spots in the city to take a date on a summer evening: pizza at Grimaldi’s, then ice cream across the street on the water.

And if you’re ever in Forest Hills Nick’s Pizza makes a great pie and awesome cappuccinos.

This seems kind of out of the blue, as most writers have written that Johan has been great with the media, taking unprecedented amount of time after each start to answer questions. It seems irresponsible to me that because of one instance, you imply that Johan can’t deal with the media. Heck, you didn’t even write what exactly Johan said or did to seem annoyed to you. Just bad work on the whole

Please, as a former reporter, I can tell you most of the questions come at one time at the locker. There is a mass movement of reporters from locker to locker. When one person asks the question, everyone writes down the same answer. So at different times they will get asked the same question. But you don’t have the News, Post, journal news, Newsday etc asking the same question many different times in a a day. They usually address the mob. One on ones are alot more informal and usually do not cover the same ground that the mob covered.

Franco: went to High School in Mamaroneck so Sal’s and of course Walters ( The Best Hot Dogs ) are always must go’s.
I know Pelham Pizza is good but Sal’s is cool always so busy I never have to get a reheated slice.
Tks for reminding me about Johnny’s. Always wanted to go and I never remember.